1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of real-time traffic conditions broadcasting and more particularly to real-time traffic condition reporting for Internet connected onboard navigation.
2. Description of the Related Art
The explosion of vehicle usage in the United States more than a half-century ago has brought tremendous benefit to the ordinary citizen. The advent of the interstate highway system now enables individuals to travel great distances at high speeds in short periods of time. The ease of travel afforded by the automobile and interstate highway system, however, is not without consequence. For most Americans, traffic has become a part of life and a daily annoyance. Indeed, the presence and anticipation of traffic affects ordinary citizens every day in planning travel and the timing of meetings with others.
For several decades, broadcast media adopted the responsibility of traffic conditions reporting over the airwaves such that listeners and viewers could more ably plan travel routing. Though traffic reports historically have been provided only at periodic intervals, given enough advance warning, savvy travelers could plan alternate routing responsive to the reporting of a traffic condition present at a portion of a planned route. Notwithstanding, planning an alternate route remained highly dependant on both the timing of the receipt of a traffic condition report and the knowledge of the traveler of an alternative route.
Global positioning system (GPS) technologies afford a tremendous leap forward in respect to onboard vehicle navigation and traffic condition avoidance. GPS technologies now can be found as standard equipment in many vehicles and provide the previously absent guarantee of alternate routing knowledge for drivers. Current GPS technologies further integrate with over-the-air broadcasting of real-time traffic conditions utilizing Internet connectivity so that drivers can correlate traffic conditions in real-time along a proposed route of travel.
Not all traffic conditions reported through broadcast traffic reports reflect a complete standstill of traffic. Rather, in most circumstances, traffic flows in an area of congestion—just not at a high rate of speed. Travelers with advance knowledge of congestion along a planned route make alternate routing decisions based upon the nature of traffic flow. So long as traffic flows at an acceptable speed, albeit not an optimal speed, travelers are less likely to prefer an alternate route. Knowing the rate of speed of traffic in a congested area, however, requires the traveler to rely upon the estimates of real-time broadcast reports over the radio over television resulting from personally observed traffic speeds (typically by helicopter or live camera feed).
Recent proposals in Internet connected GPS navigation technologies further provide for the reporting of the nature of traffic—namely the speed at which vehicles travel in an area of congestion. Those recent proposals incorporate community participation in reporting the flow of traffic in an accurate manner. In this regard, vehicles experiencing congestion can report a contemporaneous speed and present location to a centralized server. The centralized server can aggregate reported speeds and locations to provide an accurate picture of the flow of traffic at different geographic locations that can be subsequently broadcast over the air to Internet connected onboard GPS navigation systems. It will be recognized by the skilled artisan, however, that accurate reporting of the flow of traffic at a given geographic location requires enough vehicles reporting respective rates of travel in order to result in statistically relevant data.